lo-fi

True dat. Though I still can't figure out why the suspension on the inverted side is softer than the non inverted side :/ Still, I did invent a new LookAt controller in the process because the stock one isn't really suitable for this kind of craziness. And the mirror plugin has many potential applications, not just wheels if I can get it to work reliably. Will probably take a break after getting 1.8 out though, putting far more time into this than is healthy!

This is early stages and really, really hacky, but....

You have to add the names in manually, then it will let you select them from the drop-down. Click the Add Tag button and the rest is sefl explanatory. Layers are fiddle; you have to make sure you click over in the right half of the box or it doesn't bring up the text entry box Should get you sorted

Cheers dude. Next update should fix that, I'm smoothing out how the repulsors deal with height changes. I'd definitely suggest for a workaround setting the height of the replusors to something low for launch; 1.5 or two, maybe, then ramp up the height slowly using the action group or GUI slider after launch. I love that it's blowing the runway up, though XD! Look forward to the vid/pics.

In typical Kerbal fashion, the repulsors actually do nothing so clever They're essentially just wheels with the grip set to zero, so not really possible there. Adding a magic force is easy enough, but I always felt it was a little bit of a cheat, I have to admit.

I'll happily accept blender files

Thank you, appreciate it. I bought an Intuos a while back, it's surprisingly easy to get the hang of. Really nice bit of kit, and actually worth the price IMHO. Still doesn't make me any better at texturing

Yeah, I kinda have a design in mind. Should have something for you in 1.8

Oh, I think maybe lunch time today... Just been reading the latest dev notes, sounds like there is s one really solid stuff coming up for .26. Editor improvements sound excellent, in particular. I'm almost done with the code for the moment and have been watching as many texturing tutorials as I can get my hands on. Might actually get some use out of that Wacom tablet I bought all those months ago..

I'll have a think about that, sounds like quite a serious project. The wheel colliders actually have a way of measuring how much force is applied at the contact point, so rather than self levelling, a way of adjusting suspension settings to equalise how much weight each is taking ought to be entirely feasible without too much work... It would be a start, anyway. Still hacking away at wheel stuff, almost got everything back together Though how on earth I've managed to write all that code and have it work as well as it does it absolutely beyond me. Justin has just given me another idea for how to make the mirror plugin work, so I might see how that goes, and I still need to finish re-organising all the parts, meshes, textures, materials etc. with appropriates names and getting rid of the deprecated stuff. Getting there slowly.

No, it's during KSP load time that message comes up. Whether it's part tools or KSP that's actually causing the issue we may never know! Yeah, basically. Or a clip that didn't actually get properly clipped. EDIT: To be clear, the model had an animation exported, which I did not use. I left it un-rigged and added anothe animation which I created directly in Unity. This is what caused the problem. I did this because you animation that are part of a prefab (.DAE or FBX) are read-only and I wanted to animate some of the objects I added in in Unity. The solution was fairly simple: Rig as normal, open the prefab in Unity and find the animation. highlight it and hit CTRL+D, which will clone the animation. change the animator component to point to the copied animation (not the one stored in the prefab), and it will then be editable.

Fixed. Thanks guys, gave me a push to look at a few more things. The problem was to do with the exported .DAE having animation, which I ignored and wrote again in Unity. Previously, I'd broken the prefab, so this had not been a problem. In the new version where I didn't break the prefab by renaming an object (because I'd named it correctly before export), it clearly causes a problem with the Part Tools export. A nice little Gotcha! Interestingly, adding my new animation to the fresh root game object I put the dae inside did not help, I'd imagine something to do with it still hanging around in the prefab. Edit: Thanks nli2work, that's useful info I'll try to remember!

I don't think so. What happens if you do, that's a new one on me?

Yeah, running 422. I wonder if it's something to do with the prefab... Thanks guys

Hi I've got a part that I just can't get to load. It's absolutely fine when I strip the animation component off, but I get the following in output_log when adding it back on: File error: (null) at (wrapper managed-to-native) UnityEngine.AnimationClip:SetCurve (string,System.Type,string,UnityEngine.AnimationCurve) at A..ReadAnimation (System.IO.BinaryReader br, UnityEngine.GameObject o) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at A..ReadChild (System.IO.BinaryReader br, UnityEngine.Transform parent) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at A..ReadChild (System.IO.BinaryReader br, UnityEngine.Transform parent) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at A.. (.UrlFile ) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 I've stripped it right back, made a fresh scene, completely reconstructed the Unity rigging, made a fresh animation called something different, made sure the rig is set to legacy, unticked Play Automatically, checked there is nothing funny in the PartTools console log. Running out of ideas now. The part just won't load when any animation is applied. It's not even a clip I've imported, I animated this one straight in Unity. All it does it rotate one GameObject 90 degrees! PartTools appears to spits the .mu out fine, along with textures. It used to work fine, then I changed the animation slightly and this started happening, then I ran through all the steps above trying to figure out what the hell went wrong. Several hours screaming, ranting and raving at KSP have left me none the wiser! Cheers, really stumped on this one.

Is startRetractEffect definitely something you can do with MAG? I can only find reference to it in FireSpitter. Would be handy if it is, but I suspect it's not part of the stock module.

I'd love to see a full tutorial. A very interesting discussion, though.

Ah ha, just found the release thread. Rather cunning.. I can't wait for release day, and it's drawing nearer Almost have a full range of wheels and need to do a few more tracks. Landing gear would be cool to have too, and I'm tempted to use IR for the 'clamp to the ground' goodness they were showing off in the rework thread. Auto levelling... That's a tough one. Trouble is, you be got to establish what level actually is! Though with the new features, setting up the legs manually would be quite easy. New stuff pushed to GitHub last night. Repulsor water code is broken as I haven't finished messing about with it, and repulsor wheels are probably completely broken for the same reason. Large and medium wheels have new retract feature and all have height adjustment (though none have animated retract yet). Repulsors will follow suit shortly with similar improvements.

They do do it so well don't they... OK... That sounds promising. Where does this marvellous invention hail from, and how much work is it going to cause me? I stopped asking that kind of question a loooong time ago! EDIT: I've just finished extending the wheel/track module to give a nice smooth retract/disable function. There are two modes: set the suspension distance to zero and disable all control functions. Or that, plus play an animation. So Landing gear is now possible with the same module, with all the usual functions available. There is now a tweakable for suspension travel in-flight too. That was really, really difficult!!! And now I have to go and edit all my configs :/

Yeah, that's kinda what I'm thinking. The stock levels are set waaaay too low, I always just used to config edit to bring up to sensible levels. Kinda gives a little bit of play value, and a nice little touch giving Kerbals something to actually do.

Could you post your stack node config lines please?

@Shooty: No problem, always got time for sensible questions. The struts are weird; best person to talk to would be Marce as he did a whole load of work reverse engineering how they work for his ActiveStruts mod (which is absolutely awesome). Models seem to get loaded even if the name in the config is wrong, though you'll find that in-game database reloads don't work. Thanks for the tip on filter forge, it's something I've come across before, but I didn't know they had a sale on. Very cool bit of software, especially the way it makes repeating textures. If I ever get some free time I'll look at the gravestone idea @Gaalidas: over a 1000 posts. Crazy, isn't it. See notes in the config above about model loading when the config name is set wrong.. Very strange behaviour. @Madrias: Thanks, I'll look out for those I haven't pushed anything to Git for a while because loads of stuff is still broken while I refactor and refine various bits. I did some unwraps on the new models last night and slapped some temp textures on, so those will be available to play with once I get stuff sorted out once again. I've been working on a deployment feature for the repulsor wheels, but realised it would be better to have it as a standard optional function for wheels, so that's holding things up a bit. I also want to get damaged wheel functionality going for 1.8 but I haven't even started on that.

I'm working on that - it requires some mirroring trickery which I'm still perfecting for complicated parts that need stock FX modules. It is something I desperately want to get working, but quite a technical challenge. I went with the tank steer for these because it seems to be inherently more stable and it makes the parts much less complex. As the vehicle rolls, the steering naturally gets less effective, so there is a nice little feedback loop. They might actually be a little small for a go cart, but will land in the dev repo, along with the other new wheels and tracks very shortly. I've even put some rough textures on them!

I think it's an oversight. I can do a quick test, but I suspect it will use the second value as the parser will merrily over-write as it reads data in. Definitely a typo!

Got some issues to work out with the stock FX modules, but other than that it's working well. Screws are already using the mirror plugin, as you know (that's how the have different handed threads on each side), but I've updated so they rotate in the correct direction no matter which way they end up. Unlike wheels, the screws don't need any LookAt or ConstrainPosition modules, which get rather upset when you rip the objects they've found right out from underneath them. I'll figure it out eventually.